What is NASC?

By Asa Gislason

Why is NASC important for you as pet owner?

The National Animal Supplement Council (NASC) is a non-profit organization founded in 2001. The members of NASC are companies that are involved in either manufacturing or selling health or nutritional supplements for non-human food chain animals, i.e. companion animals like dogs, cats, and horses.

Dog owner holding his dogs paws

Animal health supplement regulations (USA)

It is sometimes said that the animal health supplement industry is unregulated. This is not strictly true, though some stakeholders would like to see some changes to the regulatory environment.  

The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) from 1994 provides strict guidelines for the labelling and marketing of human dietary supplements, but it does not provide such guidelines for animal healthcare supplements.

However, most animal health supplements are considered as "drugs of low regulatory priority" and as such are regulated by the FDA (the Food and Drug Administration). While minerals and vitamins for non-human food chain animals are classified as nutritional / feed supplements and are regulated as such by the FDA and the individual state feed control officers.

What does NASC do?

NASC was founded to protect and enhance the integrity of the animal health product industry.

NASC works cooperatively with state, federal, and international government officials to create a legislative and regulatory environment for the animal health supplement industry. Fair, responsible, reasonable, and nationally consistent are the keywords in this respect.

The goals of NASC are to:

- Provide consistent quality and production process controls for the animal supplement industry

- Create responsible and nationally consistent labelling and advertising guidelines

- Provide a unified, consistent voice for animal health and nutritional supplement companies

The National Animal Supplement Council advocates and collectively enforces Good Manufacturing Practice Quality Standards (GMP) in manufacturing, labelling, and marketing of animal health supplements.

The NASC Quality System Requirements provides strict guidelines for product quality assurance, adverse event reporting and labelling standards. 

maxxipaws only uses manufacturers that are NASC members.